


seeing everything clearer (sweep away dust from the mirror)

by allapplesfall



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: (Stein and Rip), Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kendra Comes Back, Mario Kart, Post-Season/Series 03, Team Bonding, beating up skinheads, everyone is at least a little in love with amaya jiwe, its as messy as you'd expect, kendra saunders!! has agency!! apart from men!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:54:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23906488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allapplesfall/pseuds/allapplesfall
Summary: She sucks in a breath. “I’m…I’m my own person, at least this time. And I’m always gonna be my own person. And the idea that someone could love me so much that we could swallow each other’s senses of self…. I was never gonna be able to give that much of myself away. No matter how many times I’d done it before—this me, the me that I am, couldn’t do that. So…I left.”Sara nods. She purses her lips and watches Kendra carefully.“But I realized…” Kendra wipes her face. “I can’t be normal. I can’t. Not anymore. I have to be somewhere where I’m not with Carter, but I can’t be hiding who I am, because that’ll eat me alive. And I loved what I was doing, being Hawkgirl, helping people. It’s just a lonely job to do by myself. That’s….” She smiles, bittersweet. “That’s why I called you guys.”or:Kendra comes back.
Relationships: Amaya Jiwe & Kendra Saunders, Kendra Saunders & Zari Tomaz | Zari Tarazi, Ray Palmer & Kendra Saunders, Sara Lance/Kendra Saunders, implied Amaya Jiwe/Zari Tomaz
Comments: 14
Kudos: 39





	1. return

**Author's Note:**

> set in ambiguous post-season 3 where amaya doesn't leave the team, sometime after sara's dad dies. is that when i started writing this? maybe.
> 
> title from green & gold by lianne la havas!

The thing is: Kendra makes a choice.

The thing is: Kendra makes a different choice.

-

At first, Kendra has no idea how to contact them. She just wanders. She takes a train to Star City, a bus downtown, and walks for five blocks. It’s not until she heads towards a particularly tall building, a skyscraper crafted from steel and glass, that she knows where her instincts were taking her. Inside, she asks for someone who knows Ray Palmer—and doesn’t _that_ feel like a name from another lifetime, a choice she made and then made differently—and gets taken up to see a blonde lady with a high ponytail.

“Felicity,” the woman says. She holds out a hand.

“I remember,” Kendra says, half-smiling. They shake.

“I know you,” says Felicity. “Kendra Saunders? Hawkgirl?”

Kendra nods.

Felicity has a look on her face like she would have been curious, once, would have been babbling and excited—but now she just looks tired.

She says, “You want to get in touch with Ray,” and it’s not a question.

“The Waverider,” Kendra corrects.

“What makes you think I can?”

Kendra raises her eyebrows.

Felicity blinks. “Wow, at least _someone_ respects my skills. Of course I can. Give me two hours? There’s a really good coffee shop next door you could wait in, their cinnamon rolls are epic.”

“I wouldn’t want to bother you, it can wait until after you’re finished—”

Felicity shakes her head. “I’m bored. Two hours?”

“Thanks,” says Kendra, and she’s not quite smiling but she’s. She’s something.

There’s a warmth bubbling up inside her that isn’t frustration, that isn’t niceness, that isn’t rage.

She hasn’t felt many things lately. This is good.

-

After two hours of sitting and people-watching with her cup of green tea, Kendra buses her mug and wipes down her table. She leaves the barista a five-dollar tip.

She doesn’t think, _in another life, that was me_.

Felicity Smoak waits for her upstairs, twirling a pen around her long fingers and chatting with someone onscreen. “I, um, I got them!” she calls, spotting Kendra. “Ray’s on the line.”

Kendra swallows. She carefully moves herself into frame and smiles, waving a couple fingers. “Hi, Ray.”

“Kendra!” Ray says. He looks the same—maybe a bit older, but the mostly the same. His sleeves scrunch up his forearms and his goggles ride high up on his head. He grins like he’s the human incarnation of a bran muffin. “How are you? How have you been?”

There’s something off about Kendra’s smile, something melancholy, but she can’t get rid of it. “I’m good,” she says. “How are you?”

“Great!”

She’d forgotten how cheerful he is.

_(Is there anything you can’t put a positive spin on?)_

“Did you need our help with something?” he asks, and now his forehead crinkles in concern. “We’re not doing anything right now.”

Something crashes behind him. Ray cranes his neck to look back at it.

“I’m sure that was fine.”

Kendra wants to laugh but doesn’t. “Ray, I know it’s been a while, but….”

She’s acutely aware of Felicity sitting beside her, watching, listening.

“But the League’s taking a break for the time being,” she continues, “and I guess I’m…freelancing now. Would you guys…want an extra pair of hands?”

It takes a moment for it to click. “Oh, um, you want to rejoin the team?” He pauses. “Uh…. Wow. We’d have to clean out a spare room, and update the chore wheel, and run it by Sara. But other than that, I don’t see why not! We’ve all missed you.”

“Run it by Sara?” Kendra asks, and hates herself for it.

“Yeah, she’s the captain now? Oh, wait—you weren’t— _wow_. There’s gonna be a lot to catch you up on.”

Kendra’s smile strains.

“What’s the date for you? And time?” Ray asks.

“Three PM, October third.”

“Year?”

Kendra blinks.

Felicity cuts in. “2018.”

“Cool.” Ray beams again. “I’m gonna go tell the others. See you soon.” Before the connection shuts off, Kendra can hear him singing, “ _If the code is 1-1-8, it’s time to save a teammate_.”

The screen goes black.

-

The Waverider lands on the roof of the building with a less than graceful thump. “Come on,” Felicity complains, fishing in her pockets for the keys to the stairwell. “They just _had_ to land on the roof. Do they know how many stairs are in this place? Well, I don’t either. But it’s a lot!”

She smiles as she starts climbing, though, so she doesn’t seem to really mind.

Autumn has bitten into Star City with grey, heavy teeth. As Kendra pushes through the topmost door, sharp winds whip at her hair, instantly raising goosebumps along her skin. She hugs her leather jacket closer to her to guard her bare midriff.

The Waverider sits in the center of the roof, large and bulky as always.

A couple people walk out. Kendra forces herself to copy Felicity, to make her way toward them with a smile on her face.

She wants this, she reminds herself.

Ray meets her there, tall and lanky and pale as a rice cake. He opens his arms for a hug, and Kendra drops her duffle bag and steps forward into it. He smells the same. He feels the same—or maybe a little looser, less tense. She hugs him like she used to, spreading her pressure and releasing quickly.

When she steps back, he has that stupid goofy smile on his face. Kendra smiles back, because who could not? She’s missed him. She hasn’t missed him like _that_ , but she’s missed him.

Something makes her reach out and pat his cheek. He glows.

There’s a rustle beside them. Felicity wraps her arms tightly around a woman with wavy blonde hair, clinging to her like a life preserver.

“Hey, Fliss,” the blonde woman murmurs, and Kendra almost chokes.

That’s Sara.

Sara.

 _Fuck_. She isn’t ready.

“It’s so good to see you,” says Felicity. They break apart.

“How are you holding up?” Sara asks. Something painful passes between them.

“I should be asking you.”

Sara purses her lips. “Yeah.”

Felicity bobs her head. “Yeah.” She clears her throat. “Um, Kendra—Kendra’s here to see you.”

And Sara turns, looking at Kendra for the first time. Her smile chases away the shadows in her eyes.

“Hey,” Sara says warmly, moving in for a hug. Kendra lets her. “Kendra.”

And now Kendra’s overwhelmed, because Sara is _Sara_ —freckled and short and smelling of steel and her deodorant. She’s so warm. Kendra accidentally breathes in her hair, something she hasn’t done since 1958.

  1. When Sara left and Kendra brought her back.



“Sara,” Kendra says. She steps back and looks at her, realizing that Sara, unlike Ray, is not the same. She’s grown up, gentled among friends. Taken on more responsibility. Ray had said that she’s the captain now. She wears it.

“It’s good to see you, big bird.” That twist to her smile—bright and sharp and teasing.

Kendra relaxes, her tentativeness fading. “You too, Tweety.”

“Ray said you wanted back?”

“If you’ll have me.”

“If….” Sara just stares at her for a moment, caught up looking at her face for a reason that makes Kendra’s chest hitch. “Sure,” she says finally. “Sure, _of course_ , yeah. Welcome back aboard.”

And there it bubbles again, the warmth in her belly that’s not frustration, or niceness, or rage.

Ray and Felicity awkwardly wave goodbye to each other. Sara pulls Felicity into another hug, and Kendra thanks her for everything.

Felicity smiles like she would rather cry.

Ray walks onto the loading ramp first. Kendra, slinging her bag over her shoulder, follows Sara up after him, into the Waverider’s cargo bay.

“Felicity?” Sara says, looking at where the woman is now left alone on the roof. “If you ever need anything…”

Felicity nods. “Same, obviously.”

Sara grins, crooked. “You’re still cute, you know.”

Felicity blushes scarlet.

The doors slide closed.

-

“Hello, Ms. Saunders.” Gideon’s voice sounds from the ceiling, still just as British and proper.

“Hey, Gideon.”

“I can’t stress how good it is to have you rejoin us.”

“Thanks.”

“Captain Lance,” and oh, that sounds _weird_ , “Mr. Palmer and the rest of the team have assembled on the bridge.”

“On our way, Gideon.”

Sara and Kendra glance at each other, abruptly aware that they’re alone in a hallway. Awkwardness settles for a moment, both of them reliving the smack of staff on staff, the satisfaction of sweat dripping into their eyes, the heat and the smiles and the brush of their skin, Kendra’s wings bursting from her back and Sara’s hands around Kendra’s throat.

“Right,” says Sara. She starts off down the corridor.

Kendra follows.

-

A bunch of people cluster around the center console on the bridge. As Sara and Kendra enter, they turn their heads, each of them looking on with different levels of interest.

She’s struck by how few of them she knows.

There’s Ray, of course. Rory’s there, but no Snart—of course there wouldn’t be, not since the Oculus. Other than that, she doesn’t recognize any of them. Standing next to Ray, a white guy with fluffy brown hair fidgets with his fingers. Across from them, a young woman with dark curls leans beside a middle-eastern woman about Sara’s age, who sits perched on the console. And a young man—still a kid, nearly—eyes Kendra with a sweet grin.

“Listen up,” Sara calls, sounding for all the world like an exasperated high school teacher. “This is Kendra. She used to be a part of the crew, back when,” she swallows, “Rip was captain. We like her, and she’s way cooler than us, so everyone, _play nice_.”

Mick tips his beer at her in greeting. “Birdie,” he says. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

“Not here.” Kendra’s a little irritated that the first thing he does after not seeing her for two years is ask about Carter. But, then, it’s Mick. He’s an ass.

“Good,” Mick grunts. “He wasn’t good for you.”

A flash of indignation spikes in Kendra’s ribcage. What the fuck does he know about it? “Nice to see you too, Rory.”

“Mick,” Sara warns. All it takes one look and he backs off. “Everyone want to introduce yourselves?”

Kendra sets down her duffel.

“Hey,” pipes up the new white guy. “I’m Nate. I’m a historian. It’s really cool to meet you—Ray’s told me about you.”

She nods a greeting.

The young kid steps in next. “I’m Wally. Wally West. Kid Flash?”

“West? Iris’s brother?” Now that Kendra searches for it, she can see the resemblance—the smiling eyes, the angle of the head.

“That’s me.” He grins.

“You’re a speedster? The new one in Central City?”

In a flash of light, Wally disappears. Half a heartbeat later, he’s back in front of her, holding out her old hawk mask. She takes it with fingers that she keeps very still.

Running her finger along the edge, she looks back up at Wally. He smiles, young and gentle. She tries to smile back, an uncertain, half-cocked thing.

“Amaya Jiwe,” says the woman with the curls. She wears a leather jacket and some kind of golden necklace—Kendra can feel power ripple off of it, making her teeth ache slightly—but she exudes calm. Professionalism. A down-to-earth quality that Kendra never would have imagined could survive on this ship for longer than a week. Amaya pushes off the table and takes a step towards her, extending her hand. With her empty hand, Kendra accepts. Amaya has a tight, warm grip.

“Nice to meet you,” Kendra murmurs. Amaya smiles at her.

The woman on the table just flicks a small wave. “Hey,” she says. She takes a donut hole from the bowl in her lap and pops it into her mouth. “M’ Zari.”

Kendra nods. All the new faces put her off-balance; where did all of them _come_ from?

More importantly, where is everyone else?

“Jax?” she asks, turning to Sara.

Sara’s shoulders drop slightly. She shakes her head. “He left. He has a wife, now, and a little girl.”

Baby-faced Jax? Not even legal to drink Jax?

“And Stein?”

Everyone in the room looks down. A knot builds at the back of Kendra’s throat.

“Oh.”

“Rip’s gone, too,” Sara admits. There’s a grief to her posture, an exhaustion to her stance. Her chin tips up, though, like she won’t admit how much that loss must have taken from her.

Kendra’s heart breaks. “Sara–”

Sara shakes her head. “Anyway, we have an anachronism to deal with. Amaya, can you take Kendra to one of the spare rooms so she can put down her stuff?”

Amaya looks at Kendra and nods.

“Awesome. The rest of you—time to shoot Lincoln.”

-

“So,” Amaya tries to break the awkward quiet as they walk down the hallway. “Where are you from?”

“Originally?”

Amaya frowns. “If you’d like.”

“Ancient Egypt.” Kendra smiles when Amaya blinks. She waves the mask in her hand. “I’m a regenerating hawk demigoddess. It’s kind of my thing.”

Amaya stares at her for a few beats until Kendra takes pity on her.

“Trust me,” she says, “it doesn’t get less weird if I say it again.”

“No,” Amaya allows. “It wouldn’t.” Then she shakes her head. “I suppose it’s only barely weirder than me being a superhero from the 1940s. Or Zari being a criminal from the _twenty_ -forties.”

Kendra takes a moment to process. “You’re from World War II?”

“Proud member of the Justice Society of America,” says Amaya, in a practiced way with idealism flaking off the edges. Some self-deprecation peeks out underneath. “And the protector of Zambesi.”

Zambesi. The African river?

“How’d you end up here?”

She huffs out an almost-laugh. “A long story involving an evil speedster, a dead boyfriend, and a poorly-planned revenge mission. You’re one of Rip’s original recruits, right?”

Kendra nods. “Yeah, from 2016. I was a barista, in that lifetime. Me and—Well, I was one of two people who could kill the guy Rip wanted to kill. And I did. Kill him, I mean.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a long story of your own,” Amaya says with a smile. She pulls to a stop before a door. “So, here’s your room.”

“Thanks,” says Kendra. “Gideon, would you–”

The door slides open automatically. Kendra says thanks again, to the ceiling this time. The quarters are…the quarters are _nice_. The shitty glorified sofa cushion has been switched out for a proper queen-sized bed. A row of glass shelves sits against one wall, a dresser and wardrobe pushed up against another. She looks to where the screen used to be, with the default beach setting that she used to make look like the shitty alley-view of her Central City apartment. Someone’s covered the spot with a tapestry—a simple sunrise, abstract and calm.

“Wow,” she murmurs. She drags her duffel into the room and drops it by the bed. She sets the mask down on the dresser.

Amaya leans against the doorframe. “Do you want to get settled? I can come back and get you when the team gets back.”

She shakes her head. “I can do that later.”

Her eyes catch on Amaya’s jawline, the mole by her bottom lip, the arches of her eyebrows. A few perfect curls escape her loose ponytail, framing her face in a way that must be intentional. The corners of her eyes and mouth crinkle into something soft and sweet.

Have she and Sara…?

“For now,” Kendra starts, “would you catch me up on what I’ve missed?”

-

By the time she’s heaping vegetarian lasagna on her dinner plate, Kendra understands the lay of the land a lot more.

Topographical feature number one—everyone is at least half in love with Amaya Jiwe.

(She says almost because Ray isn’t, and Mick might be but he’s also old enough to be her dad, so call Kendra a hypocrite but she won’t go there.)

When Nate recounts their exploits at Ford’s Theatre, he watches only for Amaya’s approval. He clocks her every wince, her every smile, her every frown. Zari, beside him, lights up only when Amaya turns to her. Wally stares at Amaya like she hung the moon—but then, he stares at everyone like that, enough that Kendra believes he’s just a very easily impressed baby bisexual with a lot of love to give—and happily passes whatever dish she asks him to. And yes, even Sara smiles more around her, which Kendra is as loath to admit as she is loath to admit that she’s loath to admit it.

The whole thing is a bit of a disaster. Kendra herself flushes when Amaya describes the training session they’d had while waiting for the team to return, though—she probably shouldn’t judge.

Everyone on this ship has always been unfairly attractive, Kendra included.

As she listens in on their conversations, she also maps the number of landmines they each dance around. Wally zips halfway through saying something before he flicks a glance at Sara and redirects the conversation. Zari glares at Ray when a trip down memory lane sweeps him just a bit too far away. Nate gets waist-deep in a diatribe about a historically inaccurate movie that they _need_ to hate-watch for movie night, guys, until he suddenly jerks to a halt, shoots a guilty look at Ray, and says, you know, maybe we should just rewatch _Home Alone 3_.

She tries to take note of when the territory seems to be getting shaky. She knows how deep some of the trauma on this ship goes—she doesn’t want to be the overexcited finger that ends up pulling some trigger. But Kendra can’t know what they’re not saying, and it frustrates her.

It isolates her, too. The whole dinner does, really, though she tries her hardest not to focus on that.

They all just…they all just _fit_.

These aren’t the Legends she left behind. The Waverider crew she remembers never ate dinner together. They smiled only in private. The hallways were always grim, gloomy. Everything was always life or death, dark or broken, sardonic or intense. Every second, they were under some artificially imposed clock, some pressuring manifestation of Rip’s manic drive to kill Savage. Tensions stayed permanently high—who knew when Mick would snap again? When any of them would?

This mess hall doesn’t feel like that. Kendra sits in the corner of a big long table, Sara on one side, Amaya on the other. Ray sits between Nate and Zari, and he grins so often that she questions whether the Ray-who-was-grieving-his-fiancé ever existed. People pass around serving spoons for a huge meal, plattered family-style, with vegetarian and gluten free options and a meat dish that apparently comes from a specific halal market in Morocco. The overhead lights shine bright and warm—had Rip kept them on a dimmer setting before?—and laughter bubbles up frequently.

They’re still an absolute _disaster_ , but more of a Scooby-Doo weed van disaster than anything else.

Kendra crosses her arms in front of her chest, self-conscious. She’s been alive for a very long time: she knows what she’s feeling and she knows why she’s feeling it. But the self-awareness doesn’t stop it from hurting. The Legends try—every couple of minutes or so they divert attention back to Kendra, ask her a question that she either answers directly or deflects—but they wade through their own in-jokes and self-referential conversations so well that it’s easy for her to get pushed aside.

Which isn’t their fault. Kendra left, and now she’s back. It was always going to be weird.

It just aches.

-

After dinner, Zari clears the last of the dishes and Amaya leans against the doorframe. Nate calls to ask if anyone wants to play Mario Kart with him.

“Wanna go?” Ray asks Kendra.

Sara sits back, her half-open mouth closing.

Kendra looks up at Ray. “Yeah,” she says. “Okay, sure.”

They bustle into some sort of team lounge, where two couches and a big fluffy chair have been pushed together around a flatscreen TV the size of a mattress. Four Wii controllers fill a black panel on the floor, recharging. Beside them, an assortment of other controllers—Xbox, playstation, something weird and bright blue—sit together beside their boxes.

Nate grabs the white remotes, handing one to each of them. After pressing the start button on the Wii box, he retreats to an armchair. Kendra and Ray take the couch.

“Have you ever….” Ray trails off.

Kendra smiles. “I might have, once or twice.”

“Do you want a refresher course?” Nate offers.

“I think I’ll be okay. Isn’t anybody else gonna join us?”

“Wally’s been banned because he’s unbeatable.”

“Yeah,” Nate adds, “Zari, too.”

Ray smiles in chagrin. “And I think Amaya thinks we’re six years old.”

That wouldn’t particularly surprise Kendra.

“And, uh, Sara’s probably busy.” Ray scratches the back of his head.

“Ready?” Nate gestures to the screen. “Press one.”

They sync their remotes. In the menu, Kendra picks Yoshi, Nate picks Mario, and Ray picks Princess Peach. Kendra can’t be asked to remember what makes the carts different, so she goes with the standard.

They get started on a circuit, Ray enthusiastically advocating for the one with the mushroom on it. After a rough start, Kendra recovers. She can do this—years playing against her little cousins have trained her into nimble, intuitive responses, and she can predict a good deal of each track. She even shakes the controller slightly to get the boost after each jump. By the time the screen squeals out the end of the track, she’s in second place behind Nate.

Ray grins. “You’ve played this before!”

“I was a teenager when the Wii came out,” she says.

“Right.” He nods. “Nice!”

When she wins the circuit, Nate looks at her with new respect in his eyes.

They play for a while longer, but Kendra gets bored after the next couple tracks. Thankfully, Ray and Nate get caught up in a plan to do something or other with the food replicator, and as they float away on the tide of their own excitement she manages to excuse herself without any awkwardness or disappointment.

Alone now, she wanders the corridors. Her hand runs along the softly humming metal bulkhead. Gideon asks her if she needs anything, but she demurs, just keeps walking, strolling a long, lazy loop from one side of the ship to the other.

She almost falls into a sort of trance when a voice through the galley doorway jerks her back to reality.

“Hey,” it says. Kendra steps towards the room and glances in. Sara Lance sits in a chair with her feet propped up on the table, a banana-yellow CD Walkman threaded into her ears by dinky black wires. One of the earbuds dangles down her chest, pulled out to pay attention to Kendra. A flask glints at her side. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” lies Kendra.

Sara looks her up and down. “Want a drink?”

-

They end up in a room Kendra’s never been in before, sitting side-by-side in armchairs. Sara calls it the library.

“Jax built it,” she explains.

Kendra misses Jax.

“What’s wrong with your office _, Captain_ Lance?” she teases. “The office did come with the promotion, right?”

“Glass walls.” Sara crinkles her nose and it’s adorable and Kendra hates herself. “And I wanted to catch up.”

For a second, Kendra’s walls flare. “Sara, you can’t just–”

“No,” Sara says, contrite, “no, that’s not what I meant.” She grins; she smiles so much easier, now. This version of Sara makes her forget about the bloodlust and the anger and the cold, detached killer who’d twice wrapped hands around her throat. “Sorry, that’s so not what I meant. I just meant catch up— _verbally_ —without the whole ship overhearing.”

“Oh.” Kendra twists her lips. “Yeah,” she says. “Good plan. Still only one bathroom?”

Sara stares at her with long-suffering eyes. “Still only one bathroom.”

Kendra grins. Sara pours them each a whiskey and offers out a glass—Kendra takes it.

“So,” Sara says. “Tell me about the _Justice League_.”

“Well, we’re real superheroes.” She rests her elbow on the arm of the chair. “We save the world, we pose dramatically, we inspire small children, we _don’t_ blow things up…”

“Alright, alright.” She waves a hand. “I get it.”

“No, seriously.” Kendra smiles. “It was good. But some stuff happened between a few of the members a few months ago. And then a couple others had personal losses and they needed time. So…we decided to put things on hold for a while.”

“You think you’ll go back?”

“I don’t know. Carter wants to, and….” She sighs. She takes a sip from her glass.

“You okay?”

Kendra considers the question. “Not great,” she admits.

Sara waits, taking a sip of her own.

“Carter is….” Kendra rotates the glass in her hand, watching the whiskey swill around the sides. “Carter was great.” She nods. “He really was. He was kind, and considerate, and caring. He had my back, guided me, encouraged me. He loved me. He loves me.”

“So what was wrong?” Sara asks quietly.

“He was… _devoted_ to me.” Kendra’s voice cracks. “Every part of his being, he thought belonged to me. And…”

“Every part of your being, he thought belonged to him?”

“It was like he thought we were one thing, one entity. One god in two forms, forever entwined, or something.” She lifts her glass and takes a bigger swallow than she means to. The alcohol burns. “And I feel…so _ungrateful_. Because there I had this man, the man the universe made perfectly for me–”

“And you were miserable.”

“And I was _miserable_.” She sucks in a breath. “I’m…I’m my own person, at least this time. And I’m always gonna be my own person. And the idea that someone could love me so much that we could swallow each other’s senses of self…. I was never gonna be able to give that much of myself away. No matter how many times I’d done it before—this me, the me that I am, couldn’t do that. So…I left.”

Sara nods. She purses her lips and watches Kendra carefully.

“But I realized…” Kendra wipes her face. “I can’t be normal. I can’t. Not anymore. I have to be somewhere where I’m not with Carter, but I can’t be hiding who I am, because that’ll eat me alive. And I loved what I was doing, being Hawkgirl, helping people. It’s just a lonely job to do by myself. That’s….” She smiles, bittersweet. “That’s why I called you guys.”

Sara reaches out and puts her hand on Kendra’s knee. “I’m glad you did,” she says. Her eyebrows lie horizontal, dead serious.

Kendra bites her lip and glances at the ceiling.

“I–“ Sara breaks off. “We missed you.”

Kendra almost says, “I missed you too,” but that would allow for something she can’t fathom. Or, rather, she _can_ fathom it, perfectly—the hand on her knee creeping up, the squeak of armchair-on-wood, the caressing of hair and the kiss, the lip and the teeth, the heat. The hunger, the need to feel the pressure on her chest lift, the fumbling with buttons and zippers and whiskey breath on her skin. The gentleness, the fingers, the gasps and the rubbing and the wet.

She can imagine it and wants it but doesn’t _want_ it. She didn’t run from one ex just to fall back into the arms of another. That’s not what this is.

Sara, for all her faults—her ragged, brittle, infuriating faults—has always been intensely attuned to body language and the silent reciprocation of others. She pulls back her hand even as Kendra only just gathers the words to say, “It’s good to be back.”

And Sara nods, slightly resigned. She reaches for the bottle again, but Kendra moves quicker—Sara’s fingers lightly brush the tops of her knuckles before she pulls the bottle towards her.

“I think we’ve had enough,” Kendra says.

And then she looks at Sara. She looks at her, really looks, in the way that people don’t tend to once they’re already familiar with someone’s voice and touch and the space they fill. She sees edges of muscle along shoulders and a new scar peeking out from a sleeve. She sees lines, firming in the corners of skin. She sees the faint texture of concealer beneath her eyes. She sees the way her gaze lingers on the bottle in Kendra’s hand for a second too long.

“Are _you_ okay?”

Sara frowns, taken aback. “Yeah,” she says.

Kendra should have asked sooner. She won’t let Sara get away with that. She waits.

“I am,” Sara says, stubborn. Then she pauses, tilts her head. “I’m thirty-two,” she says, out of nowhere. “Did you know that?”

Kendra blinks, uncertain. “Yeah, I guess.”

“ _I_ didn’t know that, until a few weeks ago.”

“Mm. If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know how old I am, really.”

“You are almost three thousand, five hundred and four years old, by my estimate,” chimes in Gideon. “In your current incarnation, you are almost twenty-eight.”

Kendra and Sara share a blank look before breaking into grins.

“Thanks, Gideon.” Kendra shakes her head. “That’s one mystery solved.”

“You’re welcome, Ms. Saunders.”

“Wow,” says Sara. “You’re even more of a grandma than Amaya. I forgot.”

Kendra huffs. “You forgot?”

“Will I get any knitwear for Hanukkah this year? Should I turn up the heat for your old bones?”

“You sure you want to be fronting like that? I heard your knees click when you sat down.”

“Pff.” Sara shifts in her seat. “Yeah. I don’t know, it just hit me. Thirty-two.”

“Scared of getting too old, cougar?”

Sara rolls her eyes. “If it affects my game, I’ll let you know.” Her smile turns crooked. “Haven’t seen any sign of that yet.”

Kendra shakes her head, crinkling her eyes. Then she remembers her original question and can’t quite figure out how they got here. "Really,” she says, her voice margarine-soft in the way that she remembers too late makes Sara defensive, “how are you holding up?”

“With what?”

Kendra purposefully looks at Sara like she’s stupid.

Sara rubs her own arm. “Not tonight. Okay?”

She pauses. “Okay.”

“You’re sure we can’t have one more glass?”

Kendra shakes her head. Again, she says: “I think we’ve had enough.”


	2. consider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beating up skinheads is good for cardio!

“Anachronism,” Ray chirps. He points helpfully to the projection in front of them.

Zari rubs her eye. “Really earning your genius card this morning, Ray.”

Amaya glances at Kendra and they share a smile.

“Okay, Nate,” says Sara. “What’re we up against?”

“Okay!” Nate grins. “So you know the Incas?”

“No,” growls Rory.

Ray frowns. “Like—the Machu Picchu Incas?”

“Yeah, exactly, a South American empire that rose to power in the 1400s. So you know how they didn’t use the wheel?”

Wally’s eyes widen. “Hold up. What? They built all that stuff without _wheels?”_

“Well, that’s the idea.” Nate finger-guns the projection. “What sucks is they now…know about the wheel.”

“Skip to the part where we make everything better,” directs Sara.

“Right. So. Looks like a cult of nutjobs in the 2300s decided that the only way Machu Picchu could possibly have been built was by alien intervention—”

“Because brown people can’t build anything,” Zari says. “Obviously.”

“Uh…” Nate scratches the back of his head. “Yeah. They were—yeah, pretty racist. Uh, yeah.”

“Aw,” Wally says, “you broke him. He’s white dude stuttering.”

“Okay!” Nate touches the control panel. “Here’s our alien-worshipping cult.”

He brings up a bunch of mugshots.

“Maroon 5 gave the Incas the wheel?”

Kendra snorts; Sara rolls her eyes. Wally grins, proud of himself.

“…Basically,” Nate agrees. “These guys went back in time to try to, like, find proof of aliens, or whatever, except they got stuck, and died, and some Incas found them and were like ‘dude, look at these wheels!’ and another Inca was like ‘uh, I think we’re doing pretty good without those, bro’ and then another was like ‘but look at these strange pale people—maybe they were trying to invade us!’”

“’Let’s figure out a way to make our roads impassable to the wheel’?” Sara guesses.

“’And prepare for an oncoming invasion of white people’?” adds Amaya.

Nate folds his fist, wind sucked out of his sails. “Uh, yep. And yep.”

“Sounds like an improvement.” Kendra tilts her head. “We have to change that?”

“Oh, I like you.” Zari turns to Sara. “We’re keeping her, right?”

Sara crosses her arms, a small smile curling her lip. “Nate, is there actually a downside to this?”

“Well, what sucks is the wheel isn’t the only thing they brought with them.”

“A virus?” Ray asks. His furrowed brow begs Nate to contradict him.

“Yeah, buddy. A virus. A super-mutated 2300s one, too. It’ll infect both the Incas and the colonizers, and they’ll spread it to the rest of the continent.”

“Okay,” Rory says. “Simple. Go to the 2300s. Kill those guys,” he raises his eight A.M. bottle of beer to the screen, “and then leave. Done.”

“Is there some way we could just neutralize the virus and still let the Incas win?”

Sara sighs. “Z, if you can figure out a way to let the Incas win that wouldn’t break time or fuck the world up worse later, we can hack the Conquista on our own. We don’t need to piggyback off of racist X-Files wannabes. I’m with Mick on this one—we target them before they jump back at all.”

Nate pouts.

Ray pats him on the back. “I’m sure we can go visit the Incas another time! For fun.”

“Yeah,” Nate sighs. “Because we do so many things just for fun.”

“We’ll make it your birthday present,” suggests Amaya.

“Okay, team.” Sara claps her hands together. “Let’s go kill Maroon 5.”

-

“She seems to like flying,” Kendra says, to break the silence. “Sara, I mean.”

Zari raises her gaze from the panel in front of her. The two of them sit on the bridge, waiting for the others to finish getting ready for the mission. “She didn’t fly before?”

“No, Rip—our old Captain did.” She quirks her lips. “Now that I’m thinking about it, flying probably makes her less motion sick.”

“You’re kidding. _Sara_ gets motion sick?”

Kendra nods. “Not when she’s in danger, but when there’s nothing else to focus on? So motion sick.”

Zari snorts. “That’s actually kind of reassuring.”

“I said the same thing.”

With a small headshake, Zari taps the screen a couple more times. But the conversation broke the tension, so Kendra gives voice to a more pressing thought.

“We’re not going to actually kill these guys,” she says. “Right?”

Zari smiles, small and lopsided. “No, we’ll probably drop them off with the least corrupt law-enforcement we can find. Murder’s not generally our first go-to.”

A part of Kendra’s chest relaxes. “Really?”

“I mean, we do what we need to.” Zari shrugs, fiddling with some of Gideon’s wiring. “But if they can go into 2300s restorative justice or something, we’ll stick with that.”

Kendra runs her finger along the edge of the panel. “That’s good.”

Zari falls quiet for a minute or so. “I remember you, you know. From when I was little. You were, like, an A-list superhero. Just…don’t forget that just because it’s awkward being back.”

Before Kendra can say anything, can do more than look up, startled, Sara, Ray, and Amaya file onto the bridge.

Zari starts talking to them about repairs to the stealth drives and they begin to formulate a game plan—which, to Kendra’s ears, really doesn’t sound much more sophisticated than a simple cover-the-exits-and-trap-them style strategy. She doesn’t chime in, though she could, because…well, because she wants to listen. As they discuss, Wally appears, as does Nate. Rory stomps in near the end.

“I say we use a disrupter first,” Ray recommends. “Try to fry their electronics, make it harder for them to just time jump away from us.”

“Won’t that fry us too?” asks Wally.

“Not necessarily.” Zari shakes her head. “We have the jumpship, right? A team goes ahead in that, triggers the pulse, and then the rest of us swoop in to help out in the Waverider.”

“I feel I should remind you, Ms. Tomaz, that you would still need to remove the jumpship from the scene before it could be compromised.” Gideon’s voice rings out clearly through the room. “Without power, moving it may prove challenging.”

“Recalibrate the shields,” Mick growls.

Wally and Nate gape at him. Kendra almost does the same, but something clicks. _She_ was around to hear the thumping, echoing footsteps of Chronos.

Zari eyes him for a moment, then nods. “Gideon?”

“That could work,” Gideon agrees. “Calibrated to the correct frequency, and if the pulse is initiated outside the jumpship, the shields should suppress disrupter interference.”

“Nice one, Mick,” Sara says. “Z, start working on that.”

“Sure.” Zari nods and leaves, heading the way of the jumpship.

“So, the plan is,” Sara glances at Ray, “we have Team A and a Team B. Team A goes in the jumpship, gets the drop on them and knocks out some of their systems. Team B follows right after and provides backup, if we need it. Some of these men have military training, so better safe than sorry.”

Ray nods.

“I’m thinking Wally on Team A,” Sara decides. “Use your speed and knock as many out as you can.”

Wally grins. “My brand.”

“Ray, if the shields don’t hold, will the disrupter mess with your suit?”

“Ooh, uh, probably. With time I could modify it, but–”

“That’s okay,” she says. “You’ll be on Team B with me. Mick, would it disable the Heat Gun?”

Mick grunts affirmative.

“Then you’re with us too. That leaves Kendra, Amaya, Zari, and Nate. Have any of you actually used the disrupter before?”

“Zari has."

She nods. “Zari’s with Wally, then. Kendra, you’re not rusty, are you?”

“No.” Because Zari’s right—she hasn’t exactly spent the last three years picking daisies.

“You and Amaya join Team A. Nate, you… No, actually, you too.”

Zari’s voice rings over the intercom. “Gideon’s helping me recalibrate the shields, Sara. We should be ready in fifteen minutes.”

“Alright. Let’s move, people.”

Kendra smiles at Amaya, a broad smile with teeth. “A-team,” she murmurs, and Amaya winks.

-

“Bringing us down onto the roof,” Zari says. “The moment we change the shield frequency, we’ll be vulnerable to their security system, so we’ll have to move fast. Wally, you ready?”

“Ready.” His face set in concentration, he unstraps himself, grabbing the detonator and hefting it in his hands. “You guys?”

“Let’s do this,” Nate says.

Kendra and Amaya both nod.

“Okay, three, two, one…here goes nothing.” Zari flips a lever.

The door slides open. Kendra just registers Wally’s absence from her side when he reappears, and Zari presses the control panel twice in quick succession before pulling the door lever back down. The second it hisses shut, she slams her palm on the remote trigger of the disrupter. The floor trembles. The panel lights stay on.

Then the door opens again.

“Move,” Amaya directs. She, Wally, Kendra and Nate spill out of the jumpship, leaving Zari to play defense in the cockpit. They sprint to the steel door, only to find their entrance blocked.

“Jammed,” Wally assesses. “Needs power to open.”

“Zari!” Amaya calls. She gestures towards the door, and Zari understands immediately.

“Get clear!”

Wally grabs Amaya and Nate, dragging them back across the rooftop. Kendra inhales quickly through her nose. Wings burst from her back, thrusting up through skin with satisfying power. One flap, two, get her above rooftop high enough to avoid the singeing blast Zari fires at the door. Adrenaline spikes through her body. Her hands ball into fists.

Seconds later, she and the team stumble through the charred, gaping hole left where the door stood. The flashlights Nate and Wally wear taped to their forearms dance beams across the walls. Kendra runs her fingers along one and finds it glazed, like tile without mortar. A few feet in, they find eerie, automated replicas of Ray’s suit littering the floor, collapsed by the pulse. Nate kicks one in the head with a steel toe.

“Guess the pulse took out the guards,” he murmurs. “Sweet.”

Kendra’s hawk eyes can make out far more in the dark than theirs can. “Down there, to the left. The stairwell.”

They make it down two flights of stairs before shouts echo below them. A man charges from around the corner onto the next landing, finger to the trigger of a highly advanced gun. Before he can shoot, however, Wally moves—suddenly inches from him, he yanks the gun from the man’s hand and tosses it down the hall. As it clatters to the ground, Wally swipes his leg out fast enough to send orange light glancing off the tile. The other man falls. His head hits the wall with a knockout thump.

Nate blinks. “I’m a secure enough guy to admit when I’m feeling obsolete.”

Wally grins. “Fastest man in the world, at your service.”

“ _Second_ fastest.”

“No one knows until you _tell them_ that.”

Amaya rolls her eyes fondly, bending to secure ties around the man’s wrists. When she straightens, she says, “Come on.”

They hurry on down the corridor, following the direction the man had come from.

“Over here!” yells a voice. Boots stomp down on the slick white flooring, at least six.

Kendra holds up a hand for everyone to stop, and, while they don’t respond as quickly or as automatically as Carter would’ve, they do pull up short. They’re ready when five skinheads round the corner, each carrying glowsticks and seconds away from firing.

Wally zips forward, disarming three like he did the last guy. But one of the others shouts, “Meta!” and hits Wally with some kind of unfairly functional ray gun, and Wally falls back, glassy eyes flashing green in the glow.

“Wally!” Nate shouts.

Bristling, the intensity and heady rage of thousands of years coursing through her, Kendra throws herself forward on the air. Slapping one man aside with her wings, she pounces on the other guy, pinning him to the floor. She clocks him out with one nasty fist to the temple. One of the men Wally had disarmed swings at her, but then Amaya, the blue aura of a ram blossoming around her, crashes into his solar plexus hard enough to leave him belly-up and gasping. Another man recovers. Nate, metal face hard to look at in the frantic flashing of lights, headbutts him to the floor.

“Wally,” Amaya says, dropping to her knees and cupping the young man’s face in her hands.

Kendra freezes. In the distance, she can hear more footsteps, and worse: barking.

“Nate,” she commands, “tie them up.”

“Huh?”

But she doesn’t stop to repeat herself—she strides forward, wings spread behind her. She turns the corner and faces five more men, nearly identical to the others except for the two unnaturally large dogs that bound before them. Spittle flies from the dogs’ filed teeth as they bay.

“Seriously?” she mutters. She can handle the men, but she _likes_ dogs.

Before the men raise their weapons even with her, she pushes off from the floor. Two powerful flaps of her wings take her right on top of them, sending one staggering backward into his friend. Pulling her staff off her back, she spins it, gaining enough momentum to crack it into the third man’s knee. He crumples. She whacks his temple with enough force to keep him down. To her left, one of the dogs lunges. She spins away, losing her balance as her wings cramp awkwardly against the narrow walls. One of the men gets in a shot with a normal bullet—it drills itself through her outer thigh. She screams.

The pain snaps everything back into focus. She can see sweat beading on pale foreheads; a coppery smell burns through her nose. The dark falls away as she pulls on her hawk senses, instincts. From the ground, she swings up with her staff and slams it one-handed into the groin of the shooter, evoking a whine more suited to the dogs, before propelling herself up with her wings and slashing a deep gash in the shoulder of another with her talons. He topples back, lip curled in fury and pain.

The final two men rush forward in unison. Kendra lets loose a guttural shout as she bats the rifle out of the right one’s hand, sending it slamming into the other’s face. As he stumbles, she pins the one beside her to the wall. She presses her forearm against his throat until he slumps, unconscious. The last man, a red welt already forming on his cheek, hangs back out of her immediate radius. He barks a command to the dogs.

More footsteps. Kendra can’t tell where they’re coming from—the approaching dogs growl, low and chilling, and she has to deal them warning taps with the staff to hold them off.

Suddenly, a knife sprouts in the last man’s knee. Dazzling blue lights up the corridor behind her. She turns and finds another person pushing to her side, staring at the dogs.

Curly hair, carefully pulled back, a black and yellow costume, a perfect jawline, glowing eyes—

Amaya.

And behind her, dressed in a new white suit that Kendra’s never seen: Sara.

Amaya doesn’t break eye contact with the dogs, taking one step towards them, and another. Against all caution, she drops to one knee, inclining her neck. An open, vulnerable posture.

One of the hounds twitches. Kendra almost cries out a warning, but Sara shakes her head. Instead of springing forward, jaws agape, the dog carefully puts one paw forward, then another. Inches away from Amaya’s face, close enough that her nostrils twitch at the bad breath, he stops.

Against all odds, his tail starts wagging.

The other joins in, his stance relaxing. He moves to lick Amaya’s cheek. She laughs, light in her eyes fading, and scratches behind his ears.

“Wow,” Kendra says. What else can she say?

“Good work,” says Sara, surveying the bodies around them. The few of them still awake shrink back. “Nate and Ray are taking Wally back to the ship, and Mick’s cleaning up the guys you dealt with. We have fifteen minutes till their generator resets. Let’s keep going.”

She strides forward, flashlight in hand. Amaya stands from where she’d been giving Fido and Spot belly rubs and follows suit. Kendra takes a step. She suppresses a hiss as the pain in her thigh flares.

The falter in her pace must’ve tipped Sara off, though, because she stops abruptly. “Kendra?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you hurt?” asks Amaya.

“It’s nothing,” she bites out. She just wants to get these guys and get out, to feel that rush of competence and satisfaction and belonging. The last thing she wants is to be fussed over.

But Sara’s eyes widen, mouth held at a concerned angle. She sweeps her flashlight up the length of Kendra’s body and pauses at the soaked fabric of her thigh. “Is that a _bullet_ wound?”

“Don’t—”

“You should head back to the ship, we can go with—”

Kendra shakes her head. “No, I’m…I’m okay. Let me do this.”

Sara, half shadowed in the glare of the flashlight, seeks out Kendra’s gaze. Whatever she sees there connects, because she sighs. She bends down and tears off a strip of the men’s uniform. “I’ll wrap it.”

“How much blood have you lost?” Amaya asks.

Tensing herself against Sara’s surprisingly gentle touch, Kendra takes stock of herself. Her stomach churns unpleasantly and the pain from her leg burns through her entire body, but she’s not dizzy. “Not too much.”

She feels a sharp pinch as Sara ties the makeshift bandage. “Alright,” she says, straightening. “By Nate’s count, there should only be two left, and then we just have to confiscate their time drive. Ready?”

Kendra nods.

Amaya starts to set off, but Kendra catches her shoulder. “If I go first, I can use my wings.”

Amaya nods, stepping aside.

The hallway’s too narrow for actual flight, but she extends enough to propel herself forward in bursts that take the weight off her hurt leg. Kendra and Sara jog behind.

Near the hangar, her eyes catch a fragment of movement. She pulls to a halt, flattening herself against the wall, as an armed man spins in their direction, drawn by the flash of Sara’s light and the muted drum of boots on tile.

“Light,” she hisses.

Sara flips the switch immediately, pulling up a few steps in front. “Where,” she murmurs, squinting in the dark. Hard edges fill her hands.

“Report!” the man calls out. “Jurvetson, Herod, report!”

Kendra takes her by the shoulders and shifts her stance. Trusting her new positioning, Sara steps forward. Knives spin through the air.

At the same moment, the guard’s finger twitches on the trigger.

Hands push into Kendra’s back, toppling both her and Sara like dominoes. Bullets crack above their heads. Pain tunnels through half of Kendra’s body as her leg presses between someone’s bodyweight and the floor, and her head spins.

A moment passes. “He’s down,” says the person on top of Kendra.

Amaya.

Phew.

“Then let’s finish this,” grunts Sara. The three of them pull themselves to their feet, Kendra leaning on the wall. The glow of Amaya’s totem lights the way to a set of double doors.

Inside the hangar, a single guy sits, pale-faced and terrified, in front of a large, dark monitor. He holds a slim pistol out at them with trembling hands. A shuttle a bit larger than the jumpship fills the bulk of the room.

“I’ll shoot!” he cries. “I will!”

Sara rolls her eyes and throws her last knife, which strikes the barrel of the gun and knocks it out of his hand. The man jerks back, nearly falling out of his chair.

“Please don’t hurt me,” he begs.

Disgust roils around Kendra’s stomach. Sure, he’s young, but still—he’s about to risk the lives of millions of people for some glorified flat-earther bullshit. And he’s scared of some _pain_?

Sara steps over to him. “You their tech guy?”

He bobs his head.

“You still calibrating the time drive?”

His gaze slides guiltily to the large hunk of hardware sitting to his right. Sara steps forward to grab it.

Amaya rests a hand on Kendra’s shoulder. “Why do smart people always do such stupid things?”

-

“Better, Ms. Saunders?”

“Way better, Gideon. Thanks.” Kendra sits up from the medical bed, leaning over to inspect her leg. If she weren’t intimately aware that a bullet had torn through it an hour ago, she never would’ve known.

Wally smiles blearily, laid out on the next bed. “Pretty cool, huh?”

Kendra smiles back. “She’s the best.”

“Oh, I missed you, Ms. Saunders.”

Both she and Wally smile wider.

“How’re you feeling?” she asks, shifting off the bed. She tests her weight cautiously, and, when the leg holds, moves over to stand next to him.

He blinks up at her. “My whole body feels like jello. Green jello.”

“You don’t like green jello?”

He shakes his head. “A villain blows up one hospital supply closet while you’re speeding through it and….” He scrunches his nose.

She rolls her eyes, fond. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

The corners of his mouth tick up. “Sweet. Top ten.”

“What?”

“Today’s one of my top ten days this year.”

“You’re lying in a hospital bed after just getting shot with a future weapon. How can this possibly make the list?”

He smiles again, his gentle, beaming smile. “We stopped skinheads _and_ Hawkgirl’s glad I’m alive? Top ten.”

She squeezes his shoulder. “Get some sleep, Wally.”

“Aw,” he says, but his eyelids droop. “Okay.”

She watches him for a minute, until his breathing slows and the lines of his face soften.

“He’s a good guy,” says a voice at the door.

Kendra turns, startled.

Ray stands there, hands awkwardly at his sides. He offers a smile. “Wally, I mean… He’s been through a lot, but he doesn’t let it get to him.”

“Hm.” She hugs her arms to her chest, lips twisting up despite herself. “Sounds like someone else I know.”

Ray ducks his head. “Yeah, well, you know, it’s always nice to have a fellow believer in the power of a positive attitude on the team.” He takes a couple steps into the room. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she says. “Yeah, better. Not exactly how I wanted to wrap my first mission back, but….” She tilts her head.

“Yeah.” Ray winces. “I can understand that. But hey, on the bright side, you saved millions of people!”

“We did, didn’t we? And we were in the _future_.” She smiles.

He smiles back.

“Listen, Ray,” she sighs. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I’m sure it must be…a little weird, having me here.”

“You mean, because of the whole loving me and Sara thing, and then leaving with another guy?”

She flushes. “I–”

He shakes his head. “It’s cool. I’m, uh, seeing someone, actually.”

She lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Ray, that’s _great_. Is it…” _Nate_ , she almost asks.

He smiles, awkward but happy. “Her name’s Nora. She’s, uh, well, technically she’s incarcerated at the moment. We haven’t really explained the whole Time Bureau thing yet, have we?”

Kendra tilts her head. “Amaya mentioned it. Rip’s agency, right?”

Ray holds up his pointer fingers. “Ah, yep.”

“She really just told me the bare minimum,” she says, because she can see him biting back explanations, backstory, and gushing about this Nora. She sits on the med bed. “Tell me about it. Tell me about her.”

He sits beside her, and does, in detail. He rambles on about their adventures and their failures and Nora Darhk. (“Wait, like the guy who killed Sara’s sister?” “Yeah, but, well–“) Which led to a discussion about little girl Nora and grown-up Nora, Nora-as-puppet and Nora-as-woman-with-agency, reparations and time bureau forcefields and regrets.

Some of it, like Rip’s death, Salvation, and whatever the fuck was up with Beebo, Amaya already told her. But lots of it, she didn’t—especially about Amaya herself, her will-they-won’t-they thing with Nate, her granddaughters, her destiny. Ray focuses on different parts, too. He so clearly wants to tell her everything that Kendra easily falls into the haze of nodding, agreeing, following four trains of thought at once until he collides them.

She lived with this man for two years. The calm that comes with listening to him talk shouldn’t surprise her, but it does.

“And you?” he asks finally. “Kendra, I’m sorry, I’ve just talked your ear off, and I haven’t asked about you.”

She smiles, patting his arm. “It’s okay, Ray. It was nice to listen.”

“I’d love to hear about what you’ve been up to, though. If you, you know, want to share.”

She pauses. If he’d asked her yesterday, or before the mission, she would’ve given him the same non-answer she gave Sara. But her muscles burn with post-op satisfaction, her shoulders hang loose and low, and somehow telling someone about the past two years doesn’t sound half as scary. So she tells him. She tells him about Victor and Mera and Diana and Jessica, about Emily’s betrayal and about Will’s death. And he nods. He asks questions. He stays quiet. He’s solid, steady, concerned Ray.

“And that’s why I’m here,” she concludes. She hasn’t said half of enough to get her from _Justice League_ to _wandering into Felicity’s office_ , but that’s okay.

“Yeah,” he says. He pauses. “You’ve been through a lot.”

“So say we all,” she agrees wryly.

He smiles, then startles. “Wait. Was that a _Battlestar_ reference?”

She smirks. “Maybe.”

“You watched it?”

“Some of it. A girl has to go through a lot of Netflix before calling you guys is her best option.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, guess so.”

Before he can open his mouth to ask his inevitable questions—which character did you like best? Isn’t viper flying awesome? What did you think of the ending?—she pats his knee.

“Thanks for checking on me, Ray,” she says. “It’s getting late, I think I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Oh, sure! Yeah, sure. Don’t let the time mites bite!”


	3. decide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kendra, conflicted about the future, has to make a decision.

Kendra takes most of the next day to explore the ship. She looks harder at the library, imagines Jax and Stein arguing over interior design; she admires the new lab, doodles a flower on the glass whiteboard. She and Mick share a quiet meal in the mess. After lunch, Gideon fabricates her some extra pairs of socks and a few new room decorations, which she contemplates putting up on three different walls before giving up and leaving them on the floor. Whenever she hears footsteps coming, she walks the other way.

An hour before dinner, Amaya and Zari find her beating up a punching bag.

“Sara was asking about you,” Amaya remarks. “I thought we’d find you here.”

“Oh yeah?” Kendra grunts, kicking with enough force to send the bag swinging.

“Yeah,” says Amaya.

“Damn,” says Zari, eyes tracking the bag. She settles crisscross on the low metal bench. Amaya leans against the wall beside her.

Kendra keeps punching. _Jab, cross. Duck. Jab-jab, cross, duck, cross, kick, roundhouse kick, dance back. Step in, jab, cross. Duck._

Eventually, they make it clear they aren’t going to say anything else. Kendra steps away, panting. She brushes a blonde curl out of her face. “What?”

“You were incredible on that mission yesterday,” says Amaya. “Reminded me of some of the fighters in the JSA.”

Kendra pretends to fix her hand wraps. “Thanks.”

Zari eyes her. “You don’t seem too happy about it.”

“No, I’m just–” Kendra sighs. “I don’t know.”

“Tell us,” Amaya suggests. She steps forward, holds the bag still.

Kendra glances at her, then returns to proper stance. _Jab, cross_. _Jab-jab, cross, duck, cross-cross. Kick._ _Thud-thud, thud-thud-thud, thud, thud. Thud._ “I’m mixed up,” she admits.

“Mm,” Amaya agrees. “I can see that.”

“Hey.”

Amaya shrugs, unapologetic.

“Being on the ship, it’s like.” _Kick, roundhouse, back up. Step forward, jab, cross. Front kick._ “I feel like I walked into my bedroom and someone moved everything around. Hell, someone _did_ move everything around in my room.” _Kick, jab, cross. Duck, recover._ “And I like you guys a lot. Too much, maybe. Going on the mission felt really nice. But I can’t help but feel like I’m going backwards instead of forwards.”

“Like you’re running away?”

Kendra drops her hands. She glances between her and Zari. “Yeah.”

“I’ve been feeling a little that way myself.”

“Because of…your whole deal with your village?”

Amaya nods. “Exactly.”

“What are you gonna do?”

Letting go of the bag, Amaya walks to where Kendra’s workout duffel sits at Zari’s feet. She fishes the water bottle out of the side pocket and holds it out.

Kendra takes the bottle gratefully. She sucks down a big gulp.

“Zari gave me some advice,” says Amaya. She eases herself to the ground, and Zari moves down to her level. “I don’t know if it can help you at all, because honestly I don’t know you that well. But it helped me.”

Kendra sits beside them, back to the wall and one knee pulled to her chest. She looks to Zari. “What’d you say?”

“I, uh… What did I say?”

Amaya nudges her with her foot. “’We choose what we care about in life.’”

Kendra raises her eyebrows.

“I know,” says Amaya. She lifts Kendra’s bottle. When Kendra nods her permission, she takes a swallow.

“Hey, I get how corny it sounds,” Zari defends. “But… I think what I meant was that _we_ choose what we care about. It’s not like there’s a universal decree of what we _should_ care about.”

Kendra smiles sadly. “It’s hard to believe that when I’ve literally had an assigned soulmate for millennia.”

“You’re not with him now,” Zari points out, and, well, she’s got Kendra there.

“Think about it,” says Amaya. “Nathaniel cares about history, his grandfather’s legacy, overpriced hair gel, doing things he thinks are ‘cool’. Raymond cares about invention, understanding the world, sticking with his principles…satisfying his minor savior complex.”

“Minor?” asks Kendra.

Zari can’t hide her smile.

“The things they care about, at least right now—they guide their choice to stay. I care about justice, honor, protecting others. Eventually, I will go back to Zambesi, because I think it’s honorable, and because I want to protect my family.”

“So why stay now?”

“Because I’m protecting people as a Legend, and I care about my own happiness, too. I have some teammates that I love dearly.” She glances at Zari, then away again. “I’m only twenty-six; I have time. I can do both.”

Kendra considers her words. If it were Ray or Sara preaching to her like this, she’d bristle—but these two are different. Something about them reminds her of Jax.

Zari watches her. “Kendra?”

“I get what you’re saying.” She looks away, takes another sip of water. “I haven’t been very happy with my universe-assigned priorities recently.”

“Yeah,” murmurs Zari.

“I just don’t know how much of this is what I want, and how much is just me running back to the familiar.”

“For what it’s worth,” says Zari, “I know a thing or two about running away. Stay or go, you can always find some way to blame yourself. It’s not a helpful way frame it.”

Amaya tilts her head, eyes warm and brown. “Besides, if you enjoy the familiar, does it matter?”

Her many, many lifetimes tell Kendra they have a point. Hell, she’s _given_ this advice before, to princes and roommates and maids of honor. But taking it herself, trying to follow her own desires—well, the couple times she’s tried, it hasn’t exactly gone well. But if things _already_ aren’t going well, what does she have to lose?

She just needs to figure out what matters to her more.

“The universe shouldn’t get a say this time.” Amaya says. “That’s some advice you didn’t ask for.”

“That,” Zari adds, almost teasing, “and you should talk to Sara.”

Amaya shoots her a look. Zari ignores her.

Kendra wipes her mouth. “Is this what you guys do when there’s not a mission? Wander the halls, trying to find someone to give an intervention to?”

Zari snorts. “Ha, no.”

“We like you,” says Amaya easily. “And no one had seen you all day, so we wondered.”

Kendra nods, touched. “Thanks. You two…you’re really sweet. Thank you.” 

“Nice,” says Zari. “Now, the real reason we came. We’re going flying before dinner—wanna join?

-

That night, after a restless half hour not sleeping, Kendra blinks her eyes open. “Gideon?”

“Yes, Ms. Saunders?”

She stares up at the ceiling of her dark, metal room. “How are you?”

“While Ms. Tomaz and I had, shall we call it, a “rocky start,” we’ve reached an understanding. I am once again fine-tuned and well-functioning. Not a dust mite to be seen in my matrix.”

“No, I mean. Not technically. How are _you_?”

Silence.

“Gideon?”

“Sorry, I’m not used to people asking that way. I’m alright, I suppose. I don’t process or experience things the same way you do, but Dr. Stein, Mr. Jackson, and Captain Hunter meant a lot to me. Though I’m designed to handle crew changes, I…continue to feel their absence.”

“Yeah.” She sighs. “Me too.”

“I know. You’ve been thinking of them sporadically for the past ten minutes.”

“Ugh,” Kendra groans. “I forgot you could do that.”

“Sorry,” says Gideon, not sounding sorry at all.

“What’s everyone else thinking about?”

“I’m afraid that’s a rather large violation of privacy, Ms. Saunders.”

“Come on, Gideon. Since when are you into privacy? Just don’t tell me anything they wouldn’t want me knowing.”

The room warms up by a few degrees—Gideon’s version of a laugh. “In that case, Mr. Palmer is in his lab, thinking about both anti-matter containment and a certain Ms. Darhk. Mr. Heywood is dreaming about eating a snack called _cheez-its_ with the Incas, while Mr. Rory is writing the climax of his next book–”

“ _Book?”_

“Have you read any Rebecca Silver, by any chance?”

Kendra squeezes her eyes shut, suddenly acutely aware of the word _climax_. “That’s by _Mick?”_

“Indeed,” Gideon says smugly. The heater spins on again.

“I'd like you to un-tell me that.”

“You asked.”

“I did. Keep going.”

“Mr. West is trapped in an elaborate dream about blue cotton candy, cowboys, and meditation gongs. Ms. Jiwe is thinking about the conversation she had with you earlier, and about Ms. Tomaz; Ms. Tomaz is dreaming about Ms. Jiwe meeting her brother.”

“Her brother?”

“You asked me not to reveal too much.”

“Right, don’t. That would be too far.”

“I understand. Do you want me to tell you about Captain Lance?”

Vaguely guilty, Kendra twists her hand in her sheets. “Would she want me to know it?”

Gideon pauses. “No.”

“Oh.” Why not? Does Sara not trust her? Is she thinking about Kendra? “No, no thanks.”

“Then we’ve been over the whole crew.”

A pause.

“Gideon?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know what I should do?”

“About what?”

“Staying or leaving.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Because you do, Ms. Saunders. And I can read your mind.”

A pause.

“Would you take us to Central City, 2018?”

“Of course.”

-

“Done with your sabbatical?”

Kendra startles. She sweeps her gaze over the exit cargo bay until she lands on Sara, cross-legged on a spare crate, fiddling with a knife with her back to the wall.

Her stomach sinks. “My sabbatical?”

Sara shrugs. “You’re going, right?”

“What?”

She stares at a point somewhere around Kendra’s knee. Her chin dimple deepens.

“Is that what you think? That I’d just leave?”

No reply.

“Wow,” she says. Hurt and disbelief jumble together in her stomach. “Seriously?”

Sara’s knuckles bleach white against the knife hilt. “What am I supposed to think, Kendra?”

They stare at each other.

“You never called, didn’t reply to my letter. Didn’t ask Felicity to pass on a message. And then you just– just show up, wanting back on the team. Just like that. Like you didn’t leave and break Ray’s heart, break my—” Sara looks away. “And I’m sorry things with Carter didn’t work out, I am. But you had this great life, being this great, mature, professional hero. I really don’t know how a bunch of losers like us are supposed to match that. So yeah. When you started avoiding me, I expected you to leave.”

“Like you did, back in 1958.”

They stare at each other. Sara really does have a lot of freckles—they stand out, stark against her pale skin.

“Yeah,” Sara says thickly. “Just like that.”

Kendra’s throat burns. “Why’d you let me come onboard in the first place, then?”

“Because…” And she drops her gaze, down to the floor. Her voice goes rough. “It’s– Because it’s you. Because I wanted you to stay more than I was scared that you wouldn’t.”

Fuck.

“Sara…” she murmurs. The ball of indignation in her stomach melts to dust.

“It’s fine,” Sara says, clearing her throat. “Of course you can go. I didn’t mean to do this weird guilt trip thing–”

“Didn’t you?”

She purses her lips. “Okay, I guess I did. A bit. Fuck, sorry.”

Kendra nods, slowly. “Why?”

“I…” Sara looks back up at her. “I needed to say that to you. That you hurt us—hurt me. That I understand and respect if you can’t stay, but I don’t want you to leave. Whatever messy thing we turned into…you were my friend, Kendra. Having you back…it’s been nice.”

“So, like a normal person who wants to express their feelings, you just brooded in the cargo bay hoping I would walk through.” Kendra can’t hide a small exasperated smile. “How did you even know I would come?”

“You had a vibe at dinner.”

“A vibe?”

Sara raises her eyebrows. “I’m a team mom now. It gives me a sixth sense.”

“Oh, please don’t call yourself a mom. Besides, if anything? You’re the rebellious little sister who’s been given a massive promotion and a guilt complex for Christmas.”

“Hanukkah.”

“For Hanukkah.”

Sara smiles ruefully, shaking her head. “Never could put one past you.”

“Nope.” Kendra moves to the crate beside Sara’s and pushes herself up to perch on top. She takes a deep breath in. “I’m sorry I never wrote.”

“No, Kendra, you don’t have to–”

“Let me. I thought…I thought a clean break would be easier, somehow. That it would make leaving you guys—you, Ray, Jax—hurt less. But it didn’t hurt less, and it hurt you more. I should have reached out before I needed something. I’m sorry. I hope I can make it up to you.”

Sara dips her head in acknowledgment.

“Honestly, I don’t know how long anyone can stay on this ship. Running from place to place, always saving the world from some huge danger—it’s a mission, a haven, a tin can full of goofy, but it’s not a whole life. Not really. I like it, though, Sara. A lot. You’ve grown up so much, and you’ve built such a beautiful family.”

She waits until Sara meets her eyes.

“I’d be honored if you’d let me stay a part of it for the next chapter.”

“Wait, what?” Little elevens crop up between Sara’s eyebrows. “You mean…”

“I wasn’t leaving. I was gonna go have an honest conversation with Carter about why I left, and to tell him where I would be.”

Sara splutters. “But, but you just let me–”

Kendra smiles, soft. “You’re right, you needed to say it. And I needed to hear it. I’m not saying I’ll never leave, just like you can’t say you’ll always stay. I went from being a barista to an A-list superhero in a year—life happens. We can’t stop that.”

The corner of Sara’s mouth ticks up. “A-list?”

“Zari said so, and she’s from the future, so…”

“The little suck-up.”

“Are...we okay?”

“Yeah.” Sara nods, and there’s acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude in the loosening of her posture, the gentling of her jaw. “Tell Carter hi for me.”

“You never liked him, did you?”

“He was your literal soulmate, Kendra. I never felt anything you can prove.”

Kendra grins. Lithely, she swings back off the crate. “Okay. I’ll go talk to him, and when I get back…” She looks up at Sara, into her blue eyes and freckles.

“Yeah?”

Something warm pools in Kendra’s chest, something like summer soda—warm and liquid and bubbly. She gets up on her tiptoes, hands on Sara’s knees, and presses her lips to the corner of Sara’s mouth. Warm, dry, simple. She pulls back, the soda fizzing in her lungs.

Sara stares at her, shocked smile curling.

“To be clear,” Kendra says, “I’m not staying because you want me to. I’m staying because _I_ want to.”

“Yeah,” Sara agrees, bobbing her head. “Yeah, no, definitely. Of course.”

“Then when I get back…” Kendra wipes her thumb across Sara’s cheek. “Maybe we can make us a little messy again.”

-

After they finish testing the new mattress quality, Sara rolls over. "Kendra?" she murmurs softly.

"Yeah?"

“I missed you."

Kendra presses a kiss to her shoulder. “I missed you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~and then they invite amaya and zari over and have some real fun~~
> 
> anyway, that's all folks! again, pls lmk what you think, and tysm for reading <33

**Author's Note:**

> please lmk what u think, and feel free to hmu on tumblr at @appleciders!


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